Report Critical of Putin Reaches Wide Audience

The Levada Center, a well-respected public opinion research institution in Russia, has released the results of a survey on an opposition report critical of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The report, “Putin. Results. 10 Years” was released by two co-leaders of the Solidarity opposition movement, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the report were confiscated by police upon its release in mid-June, but were returned to the authors when analysis for hints of extremism came up empty.

Nemtsov analyses the survey results on his blog:

The Levada Center has published the results of a survey on whether or not Russian citizens know about our report: “Putin. Results. 10 Years.” A presentation of the report was held on June 14 and the report was published on the Internet, and 300 thousand copies were confiscated in St. Petersburg and in a print shop in Smolensk in result. After an analysis for extremism, which they didn’t find, they returned the report to us. And we began to hand it out.

At the current time, 50 thousand copies have been handed out in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladimir, and Yaroslav. More than 300 thousand Russian citizens have read the report on its website.

We can only be thrilled by the survey’s results. 10% of Russian citizens have heard about our report – that’s about 10 million out of the adult population. And 2% have read the report – that’s about 2 million.

Have you heard about the expert report by Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov “Putin. Results. 10 Years”?

Familiar with the content of the report: 2%
Heard something about it: 10%
Hearing about it for the first time now: 82%
Hard to say: 6%

As a matter of fact, it was already obvious at the beginning of distribution that millions of our compatriots had heard about the report or read it. And more than half of those familiar with the report support its basic theses.

Do you agree with the basic proposals of the report?

(taken from those who are familiar with the content of the report of heard about it)

Definitely yes: 10%
Most likely yes: 45%
Most likely no: 16%
Definitely no: 3%
Hard to say: 26%

The obvious informational success is connected with the clumsy and stupid actions by the authorities, which at first organized spam attacks against our website and then confiscated and analyzed [the report] for extremism. An information war by Putin and Lukashenko when fragments of the report were published in the Belarusian official newspaper Respublika also promoted the popularization of the report.

However, the most active work of all to distribute the report begins in the fall, when trips all across the country are planned with the goal of presenting the report in the regions. Our main task is to tell people about what’s happening in our country and what’s being hidden from them by television and the newspapers.